


The Tide to the Shore

by karmula



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fix-It, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Multi, Secret Relationship, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:51:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6709345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karmula/pseuds/karmula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Obi-Wan should know, better than anyone, that a Jedi should never let their guard down when it comes to the risk of injury in the field. To do so would be reckless, foolish, and could surely only lead to great pain and misfortune. And yet, Force forgive him, this is exactly what he has done.</p><p>Alternatively: The angsty oneshot that somehow turned into a prequel-trilogy AU fix-it fic, in which Anakin's injuries during a mission actually turn out to be a catalyst for a change in the Force itself that alters the entire Star Wars timeline. With much hard work and care-taking on both their parts, the fallout of the battle that was never meant to be will ultimately save him, Obi-Wan, their relationship, and the entire galaxy - if they can only work together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Whoops, my hands slipped on my keyboard and this just sort of, uh, happened?... Kind of unavoidable, when your computer's always wet from your own tears over this pairing. :^) This is my first obikin fic, so please let me know your thoughts!

Injuries are to the Jedi as the tide is to the shore.

That is, they are considered to be an accepted and inevitable part of life, no matter how far away the oncoming wave may appear. They come and they go, and perhaps, if one is lucky, they'll stay gone for a little while longer, but one should never fall into a false sense of security; to do so would surely be that fool’s last act.

Obi-Wan is no stranger to injury himself, having sustained many himself in various battles during the Clone War, and having often tended to fallen Jedi and clones alike in the field while waiting for the medics to arrive. He has seen things that would make weaker men tremble at the knees, things that he wishes desperately he could unsee. He has seen fresh blood and smeared gore, mashed limbs and broken jaws and deep, deep red, red that stains his skin for hours after the heat of battle has passed, stains him so that all that is left is the seeping colour and the rawness of his chilled skin.

Obi-Wan should know, better than anyone, that one should never let their guard down when it comes to injuries, for the next coming of the tide is surely just over the horizon.

And yet, Force forgive him, this is exactly what he has done.

The Jedi Master sprints through the crowd that swarms around the incoming craft, all composure lost as he shoves aside anyone who stands in his way. His breath burns in his chest, the pounding of his war-drum heart in his ears. He is vaguely aware that his mouth is open, that his lips are moving, that those he passes turn to stare at him in shock at the words that pour out of him like bullets, but he can’t hear a thing save for the insistent rushing of the blood in his own veins.

When Obi-Wan bursts out of the other side of the crowd and finally catches sight of the man he has been looking for, his ragged breath halts, knocked out of him as if by one solid punch to the gut. He feels his knees give way, feels the smack of duracrete slam up into his thighs and shake him from the inside out as if from a million miles away.

The world is still spinning, but he sees Anakin with dizzyingly perfect clarity; Anakin, his former Padawan, his partner, his brother, his lov–

Anakin, broken and bloodied, lying limp in Master Windu’s arms, his dark hair pasted with sweat to his crimson-streaked forehead. Anakin, with his robes torn to strips that flap like flags in the wind. Anakin, chest rattling with each laboured intake of breath, visibly shuddering with the effort. Anakin, who reeks so strongly of blood and sweat that it seems to clog the very air.

Anakin, young and foolish and beautiful Anakin, whose Force signature vibrates with fear so strongly that it sends shock waves hurtling through Obi-Wan’s chest. In this moment, Anakin’s pain is his pain; they are one entity, bonded inseparably through their Force connection, and Obi-Wan is so, so sorry.

 _All my fault, all my fault, it’s all my fault_ , Obi-Wan thinks disjointedly, choking back a sob. He staggers unsteadily to his feet and lurches forward with his arms already extended, desperate to touch the one person to whom he is not blind.

“Anakin!” he cries, words muffled by what feels like a mouthful of cotton. Silently, almost mournfully, Windu hands the injured Knight to Obi-Wan. The older man’s hands shiver as they find purchase on Anakin’s blood-drenched clothing, gripping him so tightly his knuckles turn bone-white.

“Anakin, can you hear me?” he says, pushing Anakin’s fringe back from his ashen face, away from his closed eyes. Obi-Wan’s hand lingers on the boy’s face, his smooth skin raging with fever. His fingers ghost down over his jaw, across the soft junction where his ears meet his neck, and finally up over his cheek, his calloused thumb tracking slow, butterfly-soft strokes in the dirt caked there.

The touch sends sparks fizzing through him, bright and yellow and crackling. All of a sudden, the image before him disappears and is replaced with a vision, one so unparalleled in its horror that Obi-Wan’s legs threaten to give way again. The battlefield he had mistakenly sent Anakin to alone flashes before his eyes, death-soaked and charred. Red blaster bolts rain on his former Padawan, present General, as he directs a battalion of clones to continue the charge.

Another mistake. The field is thick with bodies, too many to count, friend and foe piled together in great smoking heaps. Flames fill the horizon as a great _cracking_ noise splits the sky behind him, and by the time Anakin has turned around it’s too late. An enemy guard tower topples, duranium and duracrete turned to deadly-hot ash and rubble. Anakin throws his hands up in a futile attempt against it, but the oncoming avalanche just keeps coming, coming, _coming_ –

Gasping, Obi-Wan is dragged back to the present when Anakin’s mouth quirks, his bleached lips quivering with the simple effort of moving as they curl into a smirk. “Master,” he rasps, eyes still closed, his voice gurgling faintly at the back of his throat. “The mission… was a success, just like I told you it… would be. Thanks… for asking.”

Something like relief washes over Obi-Wan, and pride for the strength of the man he cradles so tenderly in his arms claws its way into his still-racing heart. He feels warm, the world ceasing its relentless churning for a moment in favour of a more fuzzy sensation, as if reality were nothing but a watercolour painting.

Then Anakin coughs, blood splattering onto Obi-Wan’s cream-coloured tunic, and the illusion is shattered, their Force connection thrown into turmoil.

An unseen someone presses a damp cloth, cool and dripping, into Obi-Wan’s hand. He takes it with a grateful (albeit distracted) nod and begins mopping at Anakin’s forehead hastily, tears stinging at the backs of his eyes. “Anakin? Anakin, come back to me – talk to me, Anakin!” Even as he says it, the words sound weak, hopeless; the light at the other end of the tunnel that is their bond is fading, winking itself out of existence. The very thought rips away the ground from underneath him, and Obi-Wan can’t breathe.

The boy is seizing again, juddering violently, and a multitude of hands grasp at his clothes, trying to tug him out of Obi-Wan’s hands. Someone is talking into his ear, telling him to let go, to let them handle it, but Obi-Wan only shakes his head numbly. “No,” he protests hoarsely, his hands tightening around Anakin’s waist. “I won’t let go, Anakin. I promise, I won’t let go.”

One of those same hands brandishes a needle, gleaming with some crystalline fluid that they inject quickly into Anakin’s forearm. Abruptly, he stops bucking, sagging in Obi-Wan’s arms like a ragdoll.

Tears glimmer in his lashes, his hands like vices on Anakin’s bruised flesh. _I won’t let go, Anakin. I won’t let go._ That light at the other end of the tunnel blinks back at him, dim but there, and his heart surges. He squeezes even tighter, despising this feeling of complete and utter helplessness that ravages him at seeing his partner like this with all his heart and soul.

Then something stings his neck – a needle of the same liquid the medics had injected into Anakin, he realises. From the way his conscious thought immediately fogs over, it must be some sort of tranquiliser. More faceless beings support him with hands that now look foreign and blurred as he falls to the ground, gently prying their patient from his iron-tight grip.

In this induced twilight, Obi-Wan becomes distinctly aware of someone reaching out to him. Not by any physical means – he’s too far gone to feel that – but through the Force, instead. A consciousness, taking on a non-corporeal form in his mind’s eye. A ghostly hand, familiar in its femininity and stained with something that looks suspiciously like blood, emerges from the mist.

_Anakin._

Obi-Wan reaches out to grasp it, his fingertips glowing brightly white as he takes hold. As everything fades first to grey, then to black, he smiles, strangely content.

_I didn’t let go, Anakin._

_I know, Master. I know._


	2. Sign

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Obi-Wan has some internal reflection, accidentally-on-purpose eavesdrops on two Jedi Masters, explores - albeit unknowingly - the strength of his Force bond with Anakin, and rediscovers not only the truth about what happened last chapter, but his own feelings about both it (henceforth known as The Incident) and his former Padawan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is mostly expositional/setting-up plot kind of stuff, plus an opportunity for me to practice writing the characters and their dynamics and relationships, so not much really happens yet, but hopefully it isn't too boring! While I'm still doing a lot of conceptualising and planning for where I want this fic to go, I'm fairly certain that from hereon in, the story should only get more interesting with each update, so be on the lookout. We'll get there soon!
> 
> As always, feel free to leave your support or any constructive criticism you may have in the comments, and thank you for reading! <3

When Obi-Wan comes to, the light that strikes him is harsh and blindingly white, even through the filter of his lashes. It’s so bright he has to close his eyes again, flinching against the pain that stabs behind them. Coupled with the rhythmic but slowed thumping of his heart in his head – _which is definitely_ not _where it should be_ , Obi-Wan thinks with certainty, as if stating the obvious could help to orient him to this new environment – he thinks it’s a fair assumption to make that, wherever he is, whatever place it could be that has made a habit of assaulting incapacitated Jedi Masters with infernally piercing lights, he is in a right mess.

It’s the light of a medbay, he realises suddenly, though even with this new-found knowledge he finds himself struggling to recall what exactly he might have done to land himself in one.

His mouth tastes stale, his tongue an uncomfortably dry wedge in his throat. Huffing, he coughs feebly, but it does nothing to ease his discomfort. What he really needs, he thinks with a frown, is a drink. And if this is indeed a medbay, then surely he could just…

Obi-Wan stills his mind as if in preparation for meditation, something at which he is exceptionally good, though he would never admit that. Boastfulness, while not expressly forbidden by the Code, is _very_ much frowned upon by the Council.

He conjures an image of every medbay he’s ever seen, picturing with perfect clarity the red ‘assistance’ button that is built into the panel at the bedside of every cot according to the Republic-legislated standard. Reaching tentatively out with his mind to the Force, he flexes his fingers underneath paper-thin sheets and feels it respond to his beck and call, curling invisibly in the very air like the creep of ivy on a crumbling wall.

He’s about to push the button when the sound of agitated conversation breaks the silence, and his concentration. He feels the connection snap, and his hand falls limply to his side, useless. Then his lower body begins pulsing with some kind of excruciating phantom pain he has only just become aware of, and a cry rises in his chest  – but something inside him tells him _not_ to cry out, to stay silent and to listen to the voices, which he can now place as Master Windu and Master Yoda, instead.

So, tilting his head slightly towards the entrance through which the Council members had come, he does.

“I understand, Master Yoda, but the simple fact of the matter is that the level of attachment Kenobi showed for the boy yesterday is something we cannot –”

“Allow, yes. Understand this, I do. Out of character, it was, but not unexpected.”

 _Attachment? The boy? Yesterday? Anakin…_ Fragments of memory begin to piece themselves together in Obi-Wan’s mind, coming together much like a jigsaw, but still he fails to see the larger picture.

“Forgive me, Master Yoda, but I don’t think there was any way we could have –”

“Surprised, you would be, at what we could have done. Arrogant it is, to think that we are infallible. Clouded, our minds have become, yes. And not just by the Dark side.”

 _What they could have done…_ Obi-Wan’s heart beats a little faster as the cogs turn and he begins to imagine what exactly Master Yoda could mean. Separation from Anakin? It was not the Jedi way to form attachments, of course, but still… Surely he would not be so cruel? Especially since… Well, Obi-Wan still isn’t sure exactly what has happened, but something tells him that in the aftermath, separation would only worsen the situation.

As this thought crosses his mind, that pain in his legs intensifies, a sensation so intense it feels almost like he’s being struck with Force lightning bolting up his thighs and into his spine. He bites on the inside of his cheek to stifle the pained moan that spreads like acid on his tongue; the next thing he tastes is the iron tang of blood as his molars pierce the meat of his cheek, tearing away at it in jagged strips.

 _Anakin…_ The ghostly image of his former Padawan’s sickly-pale face springs to mind, so real Obi-Wan swears he could reach out and touch it if he only lifted a finger. While he appears to have been bathed since their last encounter (Obi-Wan can’t remember why he was so dirty, but he _does_ remember flashes of it… dirt-brown, and some crusty substance that looks suspiciously, alarmingly, like blood), fresh tear tracks still obviously mark his cheeks, and the boy’s Force signature radiates negative energy. It rings hollowly through the bond between them, completely at odds with everything such a connection is supposed to embody.

Though Obi-Wan struggles to hold on, to reach out himself and make his own projection in answer to Anakin’s own, the vision dissolves faster than he can put back together the pieces. Mace Windu has started speaking again, and in his already-weakened state, Obi-Wan finds it impossible – frustratingly so – to concentrate.

“Kenobi and Skywalker are our best team, unconventional as they may be. With the latter out of action, I fear for the future of our victory in the Clone War,” Windu says after a pause, evidently not knowing how to reply to that. Obi Wan doesn’t blame him; Master Yoda had a tendency to make even the most skilled of Jedi unsure of themselves.

“And Skywalker can be healed, but it will take time,” Windu continues, and Obi-Wan can hear soft footsteps as the man begins to pace. “His wounds run deeper than can be seen with the naked eye, Master Yoda, I have felt it. I believe Kenobi will be distracted by this, perhaps even dangerous in the field.”

 _His wounds run deeper than can be seen with the naked eye… I have felt it._ Obi-Wan swallows; a chill runs down his spine. He decides he is just about done with this playing-pretend nonsense, decides that he doesn’t care if the Masters realise he was eavesdropping under the guise of being unconscious, decides that all he cares about is seeing Anakin, holding him, stroking him…

Anakin’s tactileness has always been hit-or-miss with him, sometimes seeming like the bane of his very existence, but in this moment Obi-Wan craves nothing else.

“Perhaps meant to happen, this was,” Yoda muses, humming absentmindedly as if talking to himself. “Yes, yes. A sign, this is, from deep within  the Force. Meditate on it, I must. Meditate on it, I will. But for now – we will care for the both of them, yes. Heal them. Train them. Supervise this personally, I will.”

 _Train us? Me?_ Obi-Wan thinks, resisting the urge to frown. _I have already been trained. I have already been Knighted; I have already been given the title of Master! And Anakin… well, he’s not the most traditional of Jedi, but he is a Jedi nonetheless. What sort of training could we possibly undergo?_

“Very well then, Master Yoda,” Windu says, and Obi-Wan can just imagine the tight-lipped expression that surely adorns the older Jedi’s face. He probably has his arms clasped underneath his robes, too. How Anakin would laugh at that.

He wonders when he will hear Anakin laugh again.

He wonders when he will next see Anakin’s face, unclouded by the haze of vision, crisp as only reality can be. He wonders when he will smell the boy’s youthful, musky scent, when he will be able to reach out and truly touch him, feel his soft skin beneath his fingertips.

He wonders, with a bad taste in his mouth, just when he fell this far, and if he could have done anything to stop it.

Out of nowhere, alarms begin to shriek, and the headache behind Obi-Wan’s eyes returns with a vengeance. _It could be anything at all_ , Obi-Wan tells himself, itching to wipe away the sweat from his palms but not wanting to move, anything but what he thinks it is – until the light that filters pale-pink through his eyelids turns a deep, warning-signal crimson, and the signatures of the Jedi at his bedside mimic the change, and Obi-Wan has to come to terms with the fact that someone in this medbay, some high-priority patient, is perilously close to death.

“What is it?” Windu asks, a note of fright in his rumbling voice.

“Young Skywalker, it is,” Yoda replies. “Hurry, we must.”

These words are all Obi-Wan needs to spur him from his bed.

Ignoring the look of bewilderment on the Masters’ faces – though, he notes with distracted interest, Master Yoda looks remarkably less stricken, leading Obi-Wan to believe that perhaps he had not been as convincing in his act as he thought – he gets up, swaying a little on his feet as he does so. The world tilts with him and bile rises thick and choking in his throat, but he forces it back down, gripping onto the rail of his cot for a moment to stabilise himself.

“Where is he?” Obi-Wan demands. Windu and Yoda exchange glances, the former looking more than mildly irritated, before turning back to face him.

“No time, there is,” Yoda says, and Obi-Wan cannot shake the feeling that he is actually speaking to Windu, answering some unvoiced question Obi-Wan has not been party to, even while his wizened old eyes bore into him like blaster bolts. “Follow us, you must.”

Obi-Wan does, fighting to keep his panic reigned in, for he knows that the moment he unleashes it will be the moment he loses control over _everything_.

Which is precisely the last thing he needs right now on top of everything else, especially when he’s struggling even to remain upright.

Except that once he reaches the ward in which Anakin must be held, following close on Master Yoda’s heels – which seemed to take forever, the corridors so much more winding than he could have ever possibly thought – he realises that this, this sight before him right now, is _actually_ the last thing he needs. The last thing he wants. The last thing he ever imagined he’d have to bear witness to.

When he looks at Anakin, with his heart churning his blood into a frenzy and his knees shaking like leaves in a hurricane, his whole world falls apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little dramatic, but... I like to think that some of Anakin's dramatic flair would have rubbed off on his Master. ;D


	3. Transmarinus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Transmarinus** (latin) **:** From beyond the sea; across the seas. In which Anakin receives a message from deep within the Force, as well as another from someone who loves him just as deeply, and finally wakes up. What he and Obi-Wan will do with that consciousness, however, is another matter entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for being so patient with me! I know it's been a while since my last update, but things have been kind of hectic (not to mention super stressful) with school and my mental health and everything, so I do apologise. Still, I'm really excited to have this chapter up, and I'm extra excited to know what you guys think about it! I worked really hard on it and I'm hoping that everything should pick up and roll much more naturally story-wise from here on out.
> 
> Once again, thank you for waiting, and thank you for reading; you have no idea how much I appreciate it! Kudos, comments, and feedback are also always greatly appreciated, too ;)

Anakin blinks sluggishly, feeling oddly as if he is underwater, submerged from head to foot so that the darkness in which he has found himself swims before him like a mirage. His eyelids are heavy, and something about his body feels… not _right_ , feels out of the ordinary in a way he can’t quite put his finger on; even as he shakes away the fatigue from his shoulders, that strange sensation remains, stubborn and tingling, below the waist.

“Something has changed,” a voice hisses, the words echoing like the slither of snakes throughout the cavern. They seem to be coming from everywhere at once, to shimmer in the very air like scorching heat.

Only, Anakin doesn’t feel hot at all, and this cave is completely devoid of any of the light one would associate with such heat; in fact, he feels quite the opposite, weighed helplessly down in suffocating darkness as ice cleaves its way through layers of sinew and muscle, cuts straight to his bones, and spreads like tendrils of frost throughout his body. It invades his ribs and tightens until his breath is crushed in his chest before it ever even meets his lips, only relaxing enough for him to draw in a sharp intake of air once the voice, too, has died down.

“What is it, my Lord? Is it the boy? I have heard he has been… compromised,” another voice, lower this time, and more corporeal than its predecessor, responds. Something about that voice is familiar; it is slow, deliberate, and somehow at once subservient yet self-assured. This is an apprentice who has won many a battle; Anakin’s mechno-arm twitches, an anchor at his side that anchors him to the floor, as if consciously willing for its owner to be swallowed whole.

Frowning, he leans into the conversation, the name of the man to which that voice belongs quivering on the tip of his tongue. _Compromised?_ He attempts to force his gaze downwards, towards his legs, but something prevents him from doing so, and a violent shudder wracks his body.

“Yes, and no,” the first voice, the Master of the two, says. “It is all around us, spreading through the Living Force itself. Can you feel it, my apprentice?”

“I… can, my Lord,” the apprentice says. There is the clicking of boots, stepping further into the cavern, further away from Anakin. “But he is still only a boy, Master. He is still incapable of fulfilling the prophecy. Surely he poses no real threat to us at all, just as the Order does not.”

“Of course,” the Master snaps, impatient, and his voice cracks against the rock walls like a whip. Anakin can sense the space he is in, now, his Jedi senses more finely attuned to his environment, and knows the cavern is not all that cavernous, despite how it echoes.

(Something inside of him, some small voice of reason, points out that its echoing might also be attributed to the way his head still swims, to the way his vision is so completely clouded he can barely see. That voice goes on to tentatively suggest that he might be injured, that he might need to refocus his efforts towards escaping, rather than eavesdropping. He continues eavesdropping anyway.)

Perhaps it is even just a room, albeit one situated far beneath the surface. Beneath the surface of which planet, though, and in what system, he cannot be certain.

“But we cannot rely on that, not anymore,” the voice says slowly, as if chewing this revelation – whatever it may be, whoever this boy they keep referring to really is – over, even as he spits the words out. “Now, leave me. I must meditate upon these new developments.”

“Forgive me, my Lord, but… Would this not be a prime opportunity?” the Master says, his tone cautious, reserved. Anakin hears the swish of fabric, as if its wearer were folding their arms, or fidgeting nervously, but such details are fast becoming harder and harder to make out; his heartbeat pulses in his ears, and the rush of his boiling, infected blood has become audible. Whatever his injuries are, apparently they really are more serious than he has allowed himself to consider.

“A prime opportunity?”

The voice washes over him in icy waves yet again, like the unfriendly pull of ocean waves at night, when nothing but the moons gleam down darkly upon the glassy surface and once could swear they were alone in the Force.

Only now, it washes away his protective haze, so that he feels the sinister coil of its sharp-nailed fingers in every syllable with perfect clarity. It shocks him, pierces the ragged meat of his heart, now risen into a congealed lump that blocks his windpipe. The gasp that stutters from his lips is barely audible, but even so, it’s enough to bring him to his knees. Knees that he still can’t feel, though the rocky floor which slams into them is jagged and sharp enough to scrape skin from his stinging palms.

 “An opportunity to strike, Master! To kill the boy, while he is incapacitated, while he cannot strike back!”

The world tilts as Anakin falls, careening into the sheer face of what might be the wall of the cavern, or perhaps a large stalagmite. A gasp of cold realisation rubs his throat raw as he finally places a name and a face, a bearded, conniving face, to the voice: _Dooku._

The Sith Lord continues, and Anakin can envision, in his mind’s eye, the spittle that must fly from his whiskered lips with each word as faultlessly as if he were seeing it with his own two eyes. “I have even heard his Master, Kenobi, has been put out of action as well – we may never have another chance as promising!”

Anakin grips onto the surface with sticky, aching fingers, clinging for dear life, but his head won’t stop spinning, even with his rear planted firmly on the ground. Bile chunks in his throat and he has to resist the urge to cough, forcing it back down with a dry-mouthed swallow.

 _Kenobi? Kenobi… Obi-Wan!_ His thoughts echo distantly in his own head, broken and disjointed, as if they are not really his. _Obi-Wan… Master, please…_

“You forget yourself, my apprentice,” the voice bites out, through what sounds like gritted teeth. The rage that builds beneath the surface is hot as magma, threatening as imminent eruption. If Anakin were able to do anything but retch and heave and break into a feverishly cold sweat, he would tremble. “It is not Kenobi’s time, nor is it yours; it is _mine_. Always, it is mine! You listen to what I tell you; you do as I command! No more, no less! Now, I will not say it again – leave me, so I may deliberate upon what to do with young _Skywalker_.”

Inky-black bleeds into milky-black, the voices shrinking and shrinking as if receding at the far side of a long, long tunnel.

_Skywalker…_

* * *

Voices fly like darts across Anakin’s seizing body, shouting commands faster than the beings that attend him can obey them. Someone yells for an IV, while a droid beeps out the binary for bacta, which someone then snatches from their metal talons a moment later. Ahsoka can barely keep up with it all, her head snapping back and forth and her montrals flying with it until it all becomes an incomprehensible blur.

Not that seeing any of these doctors is what matters, anyway; all that matters is Anakin, her Master, her Skyguy. All that matters is the way his breath sounds like a baby’s rattle in his ribcage, the way the fluorescent ceiling lights bring out the sickly pallor of his sweat-stained skin, the way his mangled form writhes like a fish out of water. It makes her stick to her stomach, to see someone she knows to be so strong, so utterly helpless. She balls her hands into fists at her side, pure rage flaring in her core.

Then Obi-Wan skids into the room, followed by Masters Windu and Yoda, and tranquillity settles like a sheer cloth over her mind. Her fingers unfurl, swaying limply beside her thighs.

“Obi-Wan,” she says, relieved, and takes a step towards him. “Thank the Force you’re here, I was so worried, I –”

“What happened?” Obi-Wan all but barks, his voice so strangled as to be barely coherent. Ahsoka starts, realising how stricken Master Kenobi looks, how ghostly pale, and panic beats like the drums of war in her ears. It isn’t like Obi-Wan to show so much emotion, so much attachment. Not that she blames him, but… she inhales deeply, waiting for her breathing to even out before responding.

She just hadn’t realised how much she had been counting on him.

“I don’t know,” Ahsoka replies, gauging Obi-Wan’s reaction before continuing. “He just start seizing, so I called the doctors and –”

“He doesn’t need the doctors,” Obi-Wan interrupts, striding over to stand next to Ahsoka. She watches as the older man appraises the younger with wizened eyes, eyes that shine with a concern she’s never seen before, not like this. It sounds silly, but they almost seem to glow, an iridescent blue-white colour that pulses slightly, as if in time with a heartbeat. It’s… beautiful, and strange, and entirely unheard of.

And yet it happens anyway, all of it, an anomaly unto the Order that even Yoda’s expression slackens in disbelief at.

* * *

Two bright pinpoints of blue light dance behind Anakin’s eyelids, blooming like moonflower buds until their light fills his vision, illuminates it bright enough for him to see for the first time since coming to this Force-forsaken place.

But it is not the cavern he sees, nor the figures, Dooku and his Sith Master; in fact, the brighter the lights grow, the less Anakin’s thoughts of those two seem to concern him, and the further and further their voices fade, until, all at once, they simply cease to exist, and are replaced instead by pale, shimmering sapphire that stretches endless into the horizon.

Anakin is not so much falling as he is floating, suddenly suspended in this static space with the intangible sensation of being caught between the moon and the sea in an impossibly vast emptiness greater than either of them. His arms fall lightly to his sides as he descends, casting his gaze around him with wide eyes and frowning, struggling to reconcile what little knowledge he can recall from the pounding depths of his mind about the laws of the galaxy with _this_ , this out-of-body experience that defies all he knows, all he has ever known.

“ _Anakin…_ ”

Anakin’s whips his head around, the very air itself flickering around him with the suddenness of the movement, as if startled. Whatever this place it is, it is thick with the Force, seemingly made of it, though Anakin has no idea how that could be so.

“Master?! Master, is that you?” His voice cracks with every syllable, rippling around and through him like disturbed water and sending shockwaves through the Force so violently he can’t help but shudder. “Master!”

“Come back to me, Anakin…”

Those two piercing points of blue reappear in front of him, vibrating just beyond his outstretched fingertips. As Anakin watches, his heart thrumming humming-bird fast in his chest, they spread outwards, revealing two azure eyes, crinkled softly at the corners, that sparkle as is lit from within.

“I – I’m trying, Obi-Wan!” Angry tears spill from red-rimmed eyes, streaking Anakin’s dust-coated cheeks. “I’m trying, I swear!”

“Come back to me, my Padawan,” Obi-Wan repeats, his face emerging, transparent and paper-thin, around those two floating eyes. He seems to stare right through Anakin, as if not seeing him at all; his brows are drawn together in a frown, and his lower lip wobbles.

“Oh, Anakin… _my_ Anakin… I can feel you, Anakin. Can you feel me?”

Anakin’s robes flutter around his waist in a sudden gust of wind, wind that caressing his face with feather-soft fingers. He leans into it, closing his eyes as a sob wracks his frame. “Obi-Wan…”

The invisible hand moves across his cheek, down to his jaw, stroking languidly, with such tenderness and devotion that he finds himself wishing he could melt into it. “I can, Obi-Wan, I can.” Another tear squeezes from beneath his lashes and drips down, down, then drips onto the back of his neck from above as if from a rift in the fabric of the galaxy itself.

“No, you don’t,” Obi-Wan sighs, almost wistful. “Because this is only a Force vision, Anakin. One you are not even fully present for. Didn’t I teach you how to focus?”

“I am focusing, Master!” Anakin protests, though he makes no attempt to move away, instead allowing his Master’s hand, a natural extension of the Force, to continue roaming his face.

“You don’t,” Obi-Wan repeats firmly, resting both hands on Anakin’s shoulders. “Otherwise, you would know what this is.”

“I’m sorry, Obi-Wan,” Anakin says meekly, feeling more like a boy than he ever has in his life. “This place is strange to me… It feels like… like a convergence, a direct link between the Force and myself… between me and you.” He draws in a shaky breath, and the hands rub gentle thumbs over the nubs of his shoulders, down across the jut of his collarbone. “But how could that be possible?”

Even with his eyes closed tight, Anakin can see Obi-Wan’s smile, sunny and radiant, like a breath of summer air. “I don’t know, Anakin. Not yet. But I will, and so will you. _We_ will, together.”

The hands give Anakin one last squeeze before withdrawing abruptly, and when Anakin opens his eyes he sees Obi-Wan’s face whipped away like mist between the wind’s cruel fingers, raked out of existence with an expression so sorrowful it leaves an imprint on the sky.

Anakin barely has time to react before he is falling again, plummeting from his perch high above the world so quickly that his stomach shoots up inside of him and splatters against his spine. The sensation is so sickening that a scream tears, unbidden, from Anakin’s throat, but he barely has time to hear it before it, too, is snatched away.

The further he falls, the lighter everything becomes, flashing by in a tumultuous gradient of audibly glimmering colour and sound until the blue is white and the thrum of the Force is a dull roar, the pressure of which makes his ears pop, and –

He lands on his back in a narrow medbay cot, inexplicably lying under the sheets pulled too-tight across its width, with his eyes sealed shut by grit and grime. His breathing, uncomfortably shallow, rattles in his ears, underscored by the steady beeping of the machines that monitor his vitals. A little slow, but stable; nothing to worry about, at least for the moment.

* * *

For the first time since patient sixty-six’s arrival, the ward is still, so still that Obi-Wan is convinced one could hear a pin drop if they only listened for it. Or, as the case actually was, if they were a Jedi whose Force abilities enabled them to hear such things, even over the light snoring that rumbled from the shape curled in the cot against the wall.

Obi-Wan’s gaze lingers on the boy’s hunched form with aching tenderness, swallowing audible every time his breath so much as hitches. Though his Force signature occasionally gutters steeply, a candle in the wind, Anakin slumbers on in relative, albeit laboured, peace, and that, at least, is some small comfort.

“Strange, this is,” Yoda murmurs, breaking the silence and reminding Obi-Wan that he and Anakin are not, in fact, alone. He turns, with a thin-lipped duck of his head more out of habit than anything, to see Master Yoda’s gnarled green hands folded sagely atop his cane, raised to his chin as if pondering something.

“I suppose so, Master,” Obi-Wan says, though he can’t quite meet the little alien’s inquisitive eyes. _What does he mean, strange? Injuries happen in the battlefield all the time. Unless he means my recklessness in allowing them to happen… In which case, I can’t help but concur._ His gaze flickers back over to the unconscious Anakin, guilt swelling in his throat. _I’m so sorry, Anakin. Please, come back to me._

“Not that; _this_ ,” Yoda says, gesturing vaguely towards the space between Kenobi and Skywalker, between Master and Padawan. “Feel it, do you, Obi-Wan? Surely you must.”

“I… I suppose so, Master,” he repeats, with even less conviction than the last time. How is he supposed to feel _anything_ , when his entire being buzzes only with the need to know that Anakin is okay, that Anakin _will_ be okay? Obi-Wan wonders if this is the way his former Padawan feels all the time, thinking that if it is, perhaps he can retroactively forgive him for his distracted behaviour.

A beat passes in more smothering silence, Obi-Wan’s eyes determinedly fixated on the tuft of brown curls that fans across the pillow, framing Anakin’s still, waxy face.

“Heard my conversation with Master Windu, you did,” Yoda says finally. It isn’t a question.”

Obi-Wan bows his head, clasping his ivory-knuckled hands in his lap. “Yes, Master. I do apologise.”

“No need,” Yoda dismisses. “Begin soon, your training will. You and Skywalker both, when he awakes.”

“Training? I… I must admit, Master, I don’t understand.” Obi-Wan finally looks over, visibly ashamed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Yoda smiles, thin and crooked, and cocks his head as he considers Obi-Wan with a piercing, though not exactly unfriendly, stare. “Two of us, that makes.”

All of a sudden, the quiet explodes into a flurry of noise that begins with Anakin’s laboured breathing doubling into fitful wheezing, then exploding into a frenzy of hacking coughs that sound violent enough to tear apart a man’s oesophagus. Without hesitation, Obi-Wan all but leaps to his feet, kicking the medical droid that hibernates by each patient’s bedside to life – it beeps out a string of disgruntled curses in binary, which Obi-Wan outright ignores – and screaming in the general direction of the hallway for help.

“Anakin?” he breathes, kneeling beside him and taking one of his thrashing hands in both of his. They feel cold and clammy, the hands of someone desperately sweating out a fever, but not quite succeeding. He squeezes, lacing their fingers together until they stop trembling.

Anakin looks up at him with bleary, grateful eyes, sky-blue ringed by deep-set and bruise-like purple. Warmth trickles over Obi-Wan like a ‘fresher’s comforting stream when their eyes meet, and the tension coiled along the breadth of his shoulders instantly melts away.

“Where am I?” Anakin asks, wincing at how pathetic he sounds. It’s a legitimate question, but it tastes false on his tongue; _You’re with Obi-Wan. What else matters?_ “What… What happened? Oh, my head…”

“Take it easy,” Obi-Wan chuckles, relief etched into every line on his face. “Do you remember what happened?”

All that comes to mind is that shimmering, Force-filled world of white-blue,  where his Master had come to him as if in a dream and set him free, but he frowns, trying to recall something more tangible to relay. “I – I was in battle, and then…” Anakin sucks in a breath through clenched teeth, his free hand ghosting across the sheets and down, down, coming to rest above his legs.

Or, rather, where his legs _should_ be.

“Yes, well, that’s the thing,” Obi-Wan says in a choked, empathetic voice, giving Anakin a weak smile that he doesn’t have the energy to return. All he has the energy to do is feel numb, to feel completely, totally, and utterly _empty_.

“It seems we’re both out of action for the time being,” Obi-Wan continues, tripping over his words a little in his effort to get them out before Anakin can speak. “But don’t worry, it isn’t because of your limbs. The doctors have assured me those can be reconstructed just as your arm has been. No, it seems that Master Yoda has some training for us to complete, something he believes is necessary for your wellbeing.”

“Training?” Anakin asks impatiently, deliberately electing to ignore that last part.

“Training, yes, young Skywalker,” Yoda interrupts, but gives no further information, much to Anakin’s impatience. He has to resist the urge to roll his eyes.

“And when will I find out what this training _is_ , exactly?”

Yoda gives him a knowing smirk, rapping the tips of his fingertips against his cane. “To walk again, how soon will you be able?”


End file.
